Paulo Coelho escaped three times from mental institution

The great Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, was committed to a mental institution by his parents at the age of 16, due to their concern that he didn’t follow a traditional way of living.

Before being released at the age of 20, Coelho had escaped three times from the institution and later pointed out that “It wasn’t that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn’t know what to do… They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me.”